Darwin's principle of natural selection leads to the prediction that the proper way to analyze any evolutionary development is to see the new features as adaptive to environments. And that's a perfectly good principle. The problem is that there are many evolutionary biologists who view everything that happens in evolution as directly evolved for adaptive benefit. And that just doesn't work. Whenever you build a structure for adaptive reasons, the structure is going to exhibit properties that have nothing to do with adaptation. They're just side consequences.
The pathways that have led to our evolution are quirky, improbable, unrepeatable and utterly unpredictable. - Stephen Jay Gould
The pathways that have led to our evolution are quirky, improbable, unrepeatable and utterly unpredictable.
- Stephen Jay Gould
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived a… - Stephen Jay Gould
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived a…
Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups. - Stephen Jay Gould
Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.
The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to… - Stephen Jay Gould
The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to…
When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown. - Stephen Jay Gould
When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.
The center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days. - Stephen Jay Gould
The center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days.
In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might s… - Stephen Jay Gould
In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might s…
We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well - for we will not f… - Stephen Jay Gould
We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well - for we will not f…
Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously… - Stephen Jay Gould
Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously…
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